


iunctaque semper erunt nomina nostra tuis (my name will be forever joined to yours)

by curtaincall



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Teachers, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, variety of AUs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2503022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtaincall/pseuds/curtaincall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few AU fics I wrote based on Tumblr requests. May be added to sporadically.<br/>Title is from Ovid's Amores 1.3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fake relationship

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by tumblr user jeynegrey.

They’d pretended to be dating so many times now that they had a faux-relationship rhythm they could slip right into, bicker and banter and flirt. (It wasn’t that different from their usual rhythm, if Amy was being honest with herself. Which she was trying to be, these days.) But they hadn’t gone undercover as a couple since before Jake had left—before he’d told her how he felt and taken it back and said it again. And Amy was a little nervous that the rhythm might not be there, that it might, heaven forbid, be awkward.

It was an easy assignment, at least. They were at Oliveri’s, a four-star restaurant in Manhattan, pretending to be out for their anniversary but actually observing a meeting between two possible drug kingpins. All they had to do was watch and listen, Holt had said, and a backup team would take over if they heard anything worth following up on.

"So, what were you thinking of ordering, darling?" Jake asked her, breaking her out of her nerve-wracked thoughts.  _Darling_ —that was what he always called her when they were fake-dating. It had become a joke between them to always lace their conversations with the word, darlingdarlingdarling, until they must have been either the most lavishly sentimental couple in the world or the most sarcastic.

She’d always assumed it was sarcastic, but now, hearing it again, knowing what she knew now—she wondered if it might not have a little sentimentality to it, after all.

"Oh, you know me, darling," she said, smiling at him, doing the act, trying not to think about any possible tinges of reality. "I’m a complete sucker for a mixed-greens salad with goat cheese and candied walnuts."

"You always pick the best meals, darling."

"Don’t I?" she said, smiling. "What are you ordering? Now, remember, this is a  _fancy_ restaurant, so even your unsophisticated palate might have a difficult time selecting something disgusting.”

"Ah, never underestimate the lack of sophistication of my palate," he cautioned her. "I may not be able to find a culinary atrocity, but even the best food can be terrible when paired with the wrong wine, and I will certainly manage that."

"You’re too much, darling," she said, letting out her Undercover Giggle. 

"Not too much for you, I hope?"

"Never too much for me."

He reached across the table and took her hand in his, squeezing it lightly.

All right, maybe this wouldn’t be that awkward after all.


	2. teachers AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by tumblr user lucyripleys.

When it came to disciplining the problem students at James Buchanan Middle School, Jake Peralta (Social Studies teacher, girls’ volleyball coach) and Amy Santiago (Mathematics teacher, after-school study club leader) tended to use the bad cop/good cop routine. 

(The school was on a shoestring budget, so there was no vice principal, and Principal Holt couldn’t be bothered with unimportant matters like the class hamster that had been stolen from 6B, so it was left to the more dedicated teachers, like Amy, and the ones who had been particularly attached to the hamster, like Jake, to deal with any minor problems that arose.)

Jake was the good cop, by virtue of his position as Cool Teacher—he wore jeans to school and made that’s-what-she-said jokes during class and didn’t mind if there were food fights in the lunchroom. Amy was the bad cop, because she was the Least Cool Teacher, the one who never graded on a curve and actually enforced the dress code. 

Together, they were unstoppable.

"Hey, man," Jake said to Aidan Winters (primary suspect in the Hamster Case), "don’t get all worried ‘cause Ms. Santiago and I asked to speak to you alone, okay? We’re not gonna bite. Speaking of biting, hamsters bite, you know anything about Sparky’s disappearance?"

"Before you say anything," Amy cut in, "I should warn you that if you lie to us we will have no choice but to go to Principal Holt."

"But not if it can possibly be avoided."

"But if you lie to us it can’t be avoided."

Aidan looked from one to the other. “I didn’t take Sparky. I’m not lying.”

"Do you know who might have?"

"Promise you won’t tell who told?"

"I can keep a secret," Jake assured him solemnly. "All we care about is getting Sparky back safe."

"And punishing the perpetrators appropriately."

"Olivia Chen has him," Aidan said quietly. "She’s been keeping him in her locker and feeding him leftovers from the school lunch."

"Sparky must be miserable!" said Jake, appalled. "Amy, you deal with Olivia. I have a rescue mission. Hang on, Sparky, I’m coming for you!"

"Thank you for your help, Aidan," said Amy, shaking her head at Jake’s madcap dash out of the classroom. "Your secret is safe with us."

"And yours is safe with me."

"What do you mean?"

"I won’t tell anyone you and Mr. Peralta are dating."

"What? How did you—I mean, we’re not dating! Go back to recess! Dismissed!"

Aidan left, and Amy went to go tell Jake that they maybe had to be a little more careful in front of the students. At least for now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.   
> In this AU, Teddy doesn't exist and Jake's never come to terms with his feelings for Amy or told her about them.

Amy had always taken it for granted that someday she’d get married and have kids. As a child, all the most admirable women she’d known were wives and mothers—many of them had careers, too, sure, but the constant among them was their commitment to family. So, in a way, she was on the hunt for a husband, if you wanted to put it that way—but she’d made up her mind long ago that she’d never settle for someone only okay. The same driving force that made her try her hardest as a cop pushed her to seek a marriage that would be strong and healthy, and a husband who would be only the best possible guy for her. Her soulmate, if you wanted to get fanciful about it.

So she went to singles nights and got set up on blind dates, looking for someone whom she’d click with. She was fairly certain that she’d know when she met the right guy, but in the spirit of fair play, she gave people who seemed only okay a chance, tried to get to know them a little better before she wrote them off completely as Not Future Mr. Captain Amy Santiago. 

So far, the results had been disappointingly lackluster.

"Why don’t you try online dating?" her friend Kylie had suggested. 

Amy had figured she was too good for online dating. She was young and pretty and successful and lived in New York, after all! Surely she could meet someone organically?

But she hadn’t, not yet, and while her biological clock wasn’t exactly ticking, it would be before another ten years of trying had passed. So she swallowed her pride and filled out a profile.

Not for her the OKCupids and Match.coms of the world, of course. She wanted only the best from her dating website, and so she shelled out the $15.99 to sign up on the fanciest site she could find, Anima Amantis, which according to Google Translate was Latin for “soul of the lover.” 

After submitting her entry, the site told her to “be patient—it may take some time for us to find the 100-percent soul mate match for you! He or she may not even have signed up for our website yet—so spread the word about Anima Amantis, and help others find their one true love!”

She did not forward the email to any of her friends, because she did  _not_  want anyone in real life knowing about this. 

For the next few days, she checked obsessively for an email from Anima Amantis, but after a week of nothing, she grew laxer—it was starting to look like she just didn’t have a soulmate (or, the more reasonable part of her brain said, he was just not enough of a gullible idiot to pay 16 dollars to find love).

So it came as a surprise when, about a month after signing up, sitting at her computer at work, she got an email with the subject heading “Your Soulmate Has Been Found!”

By now, she’d paid off the credit card she’d used to pay for the site, and written it off as a mistake, made in a haze of loneliness and hormonal angst. But she was curious by nature—you didn’t rise to the rank of detective before your thirtieth birthday without being inqusitive—so she clicked “open.”

And saw the face of Jake Peralta staring back at her from her computer screen.

At first, she thought it had to be a mistake—identical twin or distant cousin or fake profile set up to pick up women. (Although that last one was pretty unlike Jake, to be fair.) But she scrolled down the personal information Anima Amantis provided, and it all seemed accurate to the Jake she knew—NYPD detective, favorite movie: Die Hard, favorite artist: Taylor Swift, favorite food: anything with refined sugar.

She looks up, across to where he’s seated at his desk, and from the shell-shocked expression on his face she knows he’s seeing the same thing she is (or, to be exact, he’s seeing her profile, her face, labelled with the same disconcerting word: “soulmate”).

A look passes between them, and without having to explain anything she says, “The website has to be a crock, right? I mean, it’s just…it’s impossible that we could be…”

"I don’t know," he says, in a funny voice (not a ha-ha funny voice, a slightly raspy and bewildered-sounding one). "I know some people who used it. And they’re all still with the people they met. They said they’re…you know. Soulmates."

"But us?" she asks him. "That’s…" and he chimes in with her to say, "Ridiculous."

She has to laugh. “Although finishing my sentence doesn’t exactly prove my point.”

"I’m not going to try to talk you into anything," he says slowly. "If you really think it’s stupid, we’ll say no more about it. But…if you wanted to, I don’t know, go out to dinner sometime…I’d be willing to try if you were."

He smiles at her, the wide goofy grin she’s so used to, and she can’t help smiling back at him.

_What the hell_ , she thinks, and with that unromantic thought begins a love story. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Indebted for concept to the Parks and Recreation episode "Soulmates."


End file.
